Frames From Fiction: Supay Fotos

A diptych accompanies this week’s fiction piece, “Second Lives,” by Daniel Alarcón. In the story, Alarcón compares two brothers’ passports—Francisco’s “blue First World passport,” and Nelson’s “Third World passport, the color of spilled red wine.” The image of the Peruvian passport and family is by photographer Adrián Portugal.

Portugal is a founding member of the Peruvian photography collective “Supay Fotos.” He and five other photographers (Ernesto Benavides, Max Cabello, Roberto Cáceres, Marco Garro, and Giancarlo Shibayama) formed the collective in 2007 after meeting in Lima while shooting for various newspapers. The photographers bonded over a shared passion for personal documentary projects that they were pursuing while simultaneously working for the dailies. In an e-mail, Portugal writes that they saw the collective as forum to share ideas about documentary photography and their culture, to discuss and get feedback on individual projects, to work together on collective pieces, and also as a platform to disseminate their images to a broader audience. They hope that, through their photographs, Supay Fotos will become a conduit for the diffusion and interpretation of Peruvian culture. “In a society filled with beauty and violence such as Peru,” they write in their mission statement, “we find valuable what the people transmit.”

Here’s a selection of their work.

Huayno, a popular musical genre in Peru, has been migrating from rural areas into urban cities, especially the capital, Lima. The popularity of Huayno has triggered a proliferation of young singers who want to start musical careers. Backed by their families and encouraged by the success of established performers, Max Cabello writes in an e-mail, “they search for the fabled popularity and economic success.” Small parties in neighborhoods on the outskirts of Lima are often the setting for a singer’s first concert.